So Long, Spring

[cactuswatcher]

After a cool early spring here (didn't need AC until well into May) Spring is gone from the desert. The prediction for today is 113 F or 45C. That's a record for today, but temperatures well above 100 are common this time of year. Even my cacti can get sunburned on days like this. I shade many of them lightly through the summer months.

If you've ever seen Desperate Housewives, you may have seen some or all of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that immediately precedes it. The phony emotions from the TV crew are irritating and the lucky home owners certainly end up with tax problems they couldn't imagine ahead of time, as well as a slick-looking crappily-built house. Tonight's season final episode involves a family who have become well known in Arizona. A Hopi, Lori Piestewa was the first Native American woman ever to die in combat while in the US military. A number of things around the state have been renamed in her honor, including a few like the popular hiking mountian, formerly Squaw Peak, here in Phoenix that had old names many Native American felt were blatantly insensitive. If you're interested in who Piestewa was and why her family was picked you can watch toniight. Fortunately because her family lived on the Navaho Indian Reservation it wasn't possible to build them a home there (they weren't Navaho, after all). So the new home was built on 'public land' nearer to the city of Flagstaff, which some of you may know as the gateway to the Grand Canyon. At any rate, since it's new construction and the Piestewas had little to start with, they may actually be among the lucky ones who will, when the dust of all of this settles, come out ahead, if not necessarily the way ABC pretends. ABC also decided to build a veterans' center for the Navaho and Hopi, which is much appreciated although the two tribes are ancient enemies and still squabble over everything. The last I heard the veterans' center had no name because the tribes couldn't agree on one. Here's an interesting story about a traditional Navaho hogan (eight-sided house) that ABC wanted to build as a display to go with the veterans' center: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0522hoganmaker22.html

Comments

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be in Arizona in a few weeks (for about two days), and I told my mom who was complaining about the temps that I'd be disappointed if I got to Arizona in the summer and it wasn't over 110. It's just wrong for it to be otherwise!

; )

Wow, you know, if my Paiute ex had died in Desert Storm, *she* could have been the first Native American woman to die in combat (she was a military police officer, so yes, she saw combat). Somehow I don't think they would have put lots of media attention on her family afterwards and built things and named things after her, though. Don't ask, don't tell.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

Well, times do change. Lori probably wouldn't have been viewed as a hero in the Vietnam era, since she was an unwed mother. No big deal now, but taboo then.

Yes, we may have a cool front come through and only be 105 or so. But, I think you can leave your sweater in your suitcase while you are here. ;o)

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

You joke, but I don't really own much in the way of "summer" clothes. They're just sort of useless in San Francisco. Sweaters, long pants, and leather jackets. It's the uniform here. Only tourists wear shorts.

[deevalish.livejournal.com]

Ah, you forget about me! Shorts and skirts!! Hah.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

When it gets down to 40 here in the morning in the winter the locals pull out their heavy coats... to wear with their shorts. I'm no local. I never wear shorts!

;o)